During his 25 years as a farmer in Carroll County, Paul Marcellino cultivated a plethora of relationships with his agriculture brethren.
He’s now an extension educator for the Purdue Extension of Howard County, but he keeps in touch with many of the area's farmers.
The stories he’s heard about the spring planting season center around one main idea: there’s really been nothing picture perfect about the soil or weather conditions.
Nevertheless, farmers were able to plug along with satisfactory progress, and most, if not all, crops are in the ground now.
“As a whole, things went in pretty well,” Marcellino said. “We always like to get it in early. If we are able to get some normal temperatures and normal rainfall, I think we’ll be fine. We’re off to a good start.”
The month of May was on its way to being one of the driest, locally, in recent memory before a deluge of rain over the weekend put an end to that. Kokomo went into the weekend having had just 2.44 inches of rain for the month, but had 5.34 inches dumped on the ground from May 29 to May 31, according to the National Weather Service.
“The big problem we have right now is the soils are saturated from the huge rain we got over the weekend,” Marcellino said. “There is some ponding in the fields, and chances are, they may lose some of the crops in those ponding areas. It is coming off relatively quickly, and the temperatures have stayed relatively cool since then, so the damage may not be as bad as it could have been for that amount of rain. It’s drying out pretty well.”
Soil conditions before that weren’t dangerously dry, but local farmers would’ve begun to have cause for concern had another week passed with little to no rain.
The dry May may have actually been beneficial for the corn, Marcellino explained. Arid conditions near planting time make the corn grow deeper roots, which make for sturdier stalks later in the season.
“Some guys were starting to get a little concerned with how dry it might be, but it really wasn’t that bad in my opinion,” Marcellino said. “There were some places, like eastern Howard County, they might’ve been a little drier.”
The cool weather following heavy rains over the weekend may actually go a long way towards saving some of the seeds trapped under the areas of ponding.
The warmer it is following flooding, the less the chance those seeds will survive. The best chance for those seeds to become flourishing crops is if the water dissipates off the ground within 24 hours.
“Any time you put a plant under that stress, it’s not going to help it any,” Marcellino said. “If you go two and a half to three days under the water in hot weather, especially with soybeans, it’s going to pretty much take them out. But, a lot of this water has been able to flow off in 30 hours. There are still some ponds out there and there will be some losses, but I don’t think it’s going to be any major amount.”
Farmers who do lose crops to flooding have to balance whether it’s worth going back and replanting this far into the season. Since the flooding wasn’t catastrophic, it’s pretty late to be going back and plugging in those holes.
The lack of precipitation was a blessing in disguise in that it allowed farmers to get crops planted fairly early.
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Indiana farmers had 88 percent of their corn crops planted by May 24, which was 7 percent ahead of the average from 2010 to 2014. Sixty-three percent of the plants had emerged by May 24, just slightly above the four-year average of 62 percent. Nearly all of the corn crop, 98 percent, has been rated fair or better, including 62 percent which was rated good and 13 percent which was rated excellent.
“We don’t always worry about corn as much going into dry soil as we do beans,” Marcellino said “It seems like later in the season your temperatures and evaporation levels go up, and you can get into some dry times. Beans are planted a lot more shallow, so it’s harder for them to get into that moisture zone than it is corn.”
For soybeans, the USDA reported 59 percent of the crops were planted by May 24, 5 percent higher than the four-year average. Twenty-seven percent of those crops had emerged by May 24, which is 5 percent below the four-year average.